Philip G. Altbachis Research Professor and director of the Center for International Higher Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. His research interests focus on international higher education issues, and especially with topics that relate to developing and emerging economies. These include the academic profession, the role of research universities, student political activism, higher education reform, and others. From 1995 to 2013, he was the J. Donald Monan, SJ University Professor at Boston College. He was the 2004-2006 Distinguished Scholar Leader for the New Century Scholars initiative of the Fulbright program. He has been a senior associate of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and served as editor of the Review of Higher Education, Comparative Education Review, and as an editor of Educational Policy.

He is author of Turmoil and Transition: The International Imperative in Higher Education, Comparative Higher Education, Student Politics in America, and other books. He co-edited the International Handbook of Higher Education. His most recent books are (with Jamil Salmi) The Road to Academic Excellence: The Making of World-Class Research Universities, Leadership for World-Class Universities: Challenges for Developing Countries, and (with Jorge Balan) World Class Worldwide: Transforming Research Universities in Asia and Latin America.

Dr. Altbach received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the State University of New York at Buffalo and was a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer on education at Harvard University. He is chairperson of the International Advisory Council of the Graduate School of Education at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia, and is a Guest Professor at the Institute of Higher Education at Peking University in the People’s Republic of China.

He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, the Institut de Sciences Politique in Paris, and at the University of Bombay in India. Dr. Altbach has been a Fulbright scholar in India, and in Malaysia and Singapore. He has had awards from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), has been Onwell Fellow at the University of Hong Kong, and a senior scholar of the Taiwan Government.

KWAME ANTHONY APPIAHLaurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University

Opening Plenary Speaker

Kwame Anthony Appiah was born in London to a Ghanaian father and a white mother. He was raised in Ghana, and educated in England, at Cambridge University, where he received a Ph.D. in philosophy. As a scholar of African and African-American studies, he established himself as an intellectual with a broad reach. His book In My Father's House and his collaborations with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.—including The Dictionary of Global Culture and Africana—are major works of African struggles for self-determination. In 2009, he was featured in Astra Taylor’s documentary Examined Life, alongside Martha Nussbaum, Slavoj Zizek, and other leading contemporary philosophers.

Named one of Foreign Policy’s Top 100 public intellectuals, Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches at New York University. He has previously taught at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and the University of Ghana. He is also the President of the PEN American Center, the world’s oldest human rights organization. In 2012, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by The White House.

Anthony Appiah’s book Cosmopolitanism is a manifesto for a world where identity has become a weapon and where difference has become a cause of pain and suffering. Cosmopolitanism won the Arthur Ross Book Award, the most significant prize given to a book on international affairs. In his latest book, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, Appiah lays out how honor propelled moral revolutions in the past—and could do so in the future. Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs) calls it “an indispensable book for both moral philosophers and honorable citizens.”

AZAR NAFISIVisiting Professor and the director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and bestselling author

Plenary Luncheon Speaker

Azar Nafisi is best known as the author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which electrified its readers with a compassionate and often harrowing portrait of the Islamic revolution in Iran and how it affected one university professor and her students. Earning high acclaim and an enthusiastic readership, Reading Lolita in Tehran is an incisive exploration of the transformative powers of fiction in a world of tyranny. The book has spent over 117 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Reading Lolita in Tehran has been translated in 32 languages, and has won diverse literary awards, including the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, Non-fiction Book of the Year Award from Booksense, the Frederic W. Ness Book Award, the Latifeh Yarsheter Book Award, the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, and an achievement award from the American Immigration Law Foundation. In 2006 she won a Persian Golden Lioness Award for literature, presented by the World Academy of Arts, Literature, and Media. In 2009 Reading Lolita in Tehran was named as one of the “100 Best Books of the Decade” by The Times (London).

Azar Nafisi is currently a Visiting Professor and the director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, where she is a professor of aesthetics, culture, and literature, and teaches courses on the relation between culture and politics. She studied in the US in the 1970s and taught at the University of Tehran. In 1981, she was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil and did not resume teaching until 1987. She taught at the Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai, and then held a fellowship at Oxford University, teaching and conducting a series of lectures on culture and the important role of Western literature and culture in Iran after the revolution in 1979. Dr. Nafisi returned to the United States in 1997 — earning national respect and international recognition for advocating on behalf of Iran's intellectuals, youth, and especially young women.

Azar Nafisi has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Her cover story, "The Veiled Threat: The Iranian Revolution's Woman Problem" published in The New Republic (February 22, 1999) has been reprinted into several languages. She is the author of Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels. She also wrote the new introduction to the Modern Library Classics edition of Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad, as well as the introduction to Iraj Pezeshkzad’s My Uncle Napoleon, published by Modern Library (April 2006). She has published a children’s book (with illustrator Sophie Benini Pietromarchi) BiBi and the Green Voice (translated into Italian, as BiBi e la voce verde, and Hebrew). Azar Nafisi’s most recent book, Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter, a memoir about her mother, was published in January 2009. She is currently working on a book entitled Reading Huckleberry Finn in America: Dispatches from the Republic of the Imagination (Winter 2014), a powerful and passionate case for the vital role of fiction in America today. She lives in Washington, DC.

DERALD WING SUEProfessor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University

Presidential Plenary Speaker

Derald Wing Sue is Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Teachers College and the School of Social Work, Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, and has served as a training faculty member with the Institute for Management Studies and the Columbia University Executive Training Programs. He was the Co-Founder and first President of the Asian American Psychological Association, past presidents of the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues (Division 45) and the Society of Counseling Psychology (Division 17). Dr. Sue is a member of the American Counseling Association, Fellows of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology. Dr. Sue has served as Editor of the Personnel and Guidance Journal (now the Journal for Counseling and Development), Associate Editor of the American Psychologist, Editorial Member to Asian Journal of Counselling, serves on the Council of Elders for Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, and has been or continues to be a consulting editor for numerous journals and publications.

Derald Wing Sue is a pioneer in the field of multicultural psychology, multicultural education, multicultural counseling and therapy, and the psychology of racism/antiracism. He has done extensive multicultural research and writing in psychology and education and is author of over 150 publications, 17 books, and numerous media productions. In all of these endeavors, his commitment to multiculturalism has been obvious, and his contributions have forced the field to seriously question the monocultural knowledge base of its theories and practices. With the help of many colleagues, he chaired committees for the Society of Counseling Psychology and the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development that resulted in laying the foundations for the cultural competency movement in the delivery of mental health services to an increasingly diverse population. Dr. Sue has worked with mental health practitioners, university faculty, teachers, students, community leaders, senior executives, and middle-level managers. Dr. Sue has presented and traveled in Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Macau, the Philippines, and Singapore), New Zealand and Europe. He has worked with UNESCO on their “Teaching Respect for All” project that uses education to combat racism and xenophobia in countries like Asia, Africa, Europe, South America and the Middle East. His current research involves the relationship of microaggressions and difficult dialogues on race, and he is currently working on a book titled: Race Talk: The Psychology of Racial Dialogues.

As recognition of his outstanding contributions, Dr. Sue has been the recipient of numerous awards from professional organizations, educational institutions, and community groups. He has been honored by the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development with the Professional Development Award and the Research Award; by the Asian American Psychological Association with the Leadership Award, Distinguished Contributions Award and President’s Award; by the Third World Counselors Association with the Leadership and Distinguished Contributions to Cross Cultural Theory Award; by The Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues with the Mentoring and Leadership Award; by Center for the Study of Teaching and Learning Diversity with the Diversity in Teaching and Learning Lifetime Achievement Award; by the California Psychological Association with the Distinguished Scientific Achievement to Psychology Award; by the American Counseling Association with the Professional Development Award; by the Society of Counseling Psychology, Sage Publications and The Counseling Psychologist for the Outstanding Publication of 2001; by California State University, Hayward, Alliant University and Teachers College, Columbia University for Outstanding Faculty or Teaching Awards; by the American Psychological Association with the Career Contributions to Education and Training Award and a Presidential Citation for Outstanding Service; by the National Multicultural Conference and Summit with the Dalmas A. Taylor Award; by the University of Oregon with the Outstanding Alumnus Award, by the American Psychological Foundations with the Rosalee G. Weiss Outstanding Psychologist Award, by the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues with Lifetime Achievement Award and by the Los Angeles County Psychological Association for the Distinguished Service to the Profession of Psychology Award. In a 2012 study titled “Legends of the Field: Influential Scholars in Multicultural Counseling, Dr. Sue was identified as the top-cited scholar across multicultural textbooks and his influence was described as “profound.” He is the 2013 American Psychological Association recipient of the Public Interest Award. As evidence of Dr. Sue's stature in the field, two studies (1989 and 2012) of multicultural publications and scholars concluded that "Impressively, Derald Wing Sue is without doubt the most influential multicultural scholar in the United States."